Plot analysis of barren city

Directed by Xu Xiaoling and starring Gaowa Siqin, Shuanzhong Chu, Hao, Gao Jun and Han Sanming, Fortress Besieged was released in China on May 6th, 2008.

The story of the film took place in a small mountain village and a closed village in Shanxi during the Republic of China. Chang Bao heard that the daughter who married the son of the county magistrate said that as long as a "ceremony, justice and shame hall" was built, 300,000 oceans and relief food could be obtained. It's a pity that Chang Bao and his father don't understand a word, and they don't know what "courtesy, justice and shame" means. There happened to be a foreign widow named Li Yilian in the village. Under their misinterpretation, this ancestral hall became "Li Yilian's ancestral hall", and the place where the "ancestral hall" was built, after the guidance of fortune tellers, was precisely Li Yilian's home in the old frame.

Such a misplaced story caused the biggest joke in the whole film. Behind the story is undoubtedly the conflict between old and new ideas. Foreign widows represent new ideas, while people in the village are typical of ignorance and seclusion. Widows who pursue freedom have their own incompatible attitudes magnified by absurd reality in the big environment, which is embarrassing. Build a ancestral temple for the living, build it yourself, fight the whole village with the ingots and forests left by the ancestors, and finally burn the widows. The movie seems to be a fusion of "Water from the Donkey" and "Killing Life".

Against the background of the new life culture movement, the film snoops from the perspective of human nature, tells the conflict between the brand-new ideological trend and the local ancestral temple culture in the twenty-four years of the Republic of China, depicts the life mode and secular daily life of the people at that time, and depicts a sadistic story of a young man and a woman who love each other but can't be together. The indifference of people in the film makes the audience feel deeply sad and powerless.

The story of the abandoned capital is like an exquisitely designed organ. Through the intricate layout, it illuminates the helplessness brought by the tragedy of the times and the tragedy of personal destiny, and its theme is thought-provoking. It is worth mentioning that director Xu Xiaoling also won the Best Newcomer Director Award at the Macau International Film Festival for his excellent film debut.